SARANAC LAKE — The village is accepting applications for new members to its Housing Task Force to fill two vacancies left two months ago when coordinator Melinda Little and member Sarah Clarkin resigned for personal reasons.

Village Community Development Director Jamie Konkoski said they’ll have no shortage of people to choose from. When the initial call for letters of interest to the task force went out last spring, the village got 27. Ten people were appointed, so she said they’ve still got the 17 remaining applicants who weren’t chosen then. These people don’t need to resubmit letters, Konkoski said. They’ll automatically be considered for the task force.

“We’re starting with that pool of applicants, but because so much time has passed we figured we’d do another call for letters of interest in case there’s any recently interested people out there,” she said.

Anyone interested in serving on the Housing Task Force should email a letter of interest to Konkoski by March 7 at comdev@saranaclakeny.gov.

The current members of the Housing Task Force will review letters of interest and recommend candidates to the full village board. The Housing Task Force meets next on March 9. Konkoski said they should make their recommendations then to allow new members to start attending meetings in April.

The task force was established in April 2022 with the goal of facilitating the implementation of the village’s Housing Plan.

The purpose of the Housing Task Force is “to track progress, assist with completion of action items, and study best practices and successful strategies for housing development.”

“The primary goal is to identify new members with a passion for addressing housing needs, willingness to put forth the effort needed to make progress on complex issues, and skillsets/experience that would be of direct value to the task force,” according to a village call for letters of interest.

The village is looking for people with professional experience in fields including housing organizations, finance, real estate, construction trades and major employers.

While these are “preferred qualifications,” this list is not limited to just these fields.

Konkoski said Clarkin, the executive director for the Harrietstown Housing Authority, represented a housing organization. There’s another member who represents a national housing organization, so they’d like more. But Konkoski said there’s not many housing organizations in Franklin County.

Clarkin was not immediately available for comment by deadline Thursday.

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Little, tired but optimistic

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Little, a former village trustee, said a couple of things led to her resignation — she recently got married, she’s on four other local boards, she’s still working with her angel investing group Point Positive and after five years on local housing groups, she’s tired.

Little said she agreed to chair the task force in the first place to ensure there was a smooth transition from the Housing Work Group she had led to this new group. She said that transition has been done. The priorities and strategies that the work group had developed have been transferred over to the task force and she feels comfortable stepping away at this point.

“I think at this point the group has some good ideas,” she said.

“Frankly, I feel seriously tired in terms of trying to move things forward with housing,” Little added. “They need some fresh eyes and fresh blood.”

It’s been difficult at times moving things forward in the five years she’s been involved in it. She did say things are starting to move and she said the Saranac Lofts are a “shining light.”

“I’m optimistic for the future,” Little said. “I’m not going away, I just don’t want to be running the group anymore.”

Little repeated the line everyone involved in housing has been saying for years: “It’s a really complex issue and there are no quick solutions.”

“I’m really proud of the fact that we started looking at this before anybody else was talking about it in any public way. I think that gave us a leg up,” Little said.

She said the group has made good contributions and said other advancements, like the recently approved Franklin County land bank, are “fabulous.”

One of the big things the task force has been involved in is the village’s still-under-discussion short-term vacation rental regulations. This draft law has morphed into something a bit different than what the initial Housing Task Force had drawn up, with changes that Little has asked to be reversed at village board meetings in recent weeks.

Little said that was not the reason she resigned, though.

“I didn’t resign because of the STRs. Let me just be clear about that,” Little said. “Only in that it made me very tired.”

She was frustrated that after the work group had put a lot of effort into coming up with what they thought were really good recommendations, the law went in a different route under the task force and village board.

Little had hoped the law would focus more on regulating the number of STRs in neighborhood zones, with the goal of retaining “integrity of neighborhoods.” This move away from zones was “disappointing” to her, she said. She still hopes the final law will move closer to that.

Little said when she resigned the task force was done with STRs and moving on to other housing issues. She said she’s looking forward to what they come up with.